Desperately begging everyone online to listen to this conversation asap. It covers trans rights, yes, but more broadly discusses the creation and perception of political discourse online vs. irl. Specific to the US but applicable to so many other contexts in the digital fundamentalist age we’re all living in. It’ll only be free for less than a week from now before it goes behind The NY Times subscription paywall, so I recommend diving in today if you haven’t.
Podcast Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 06/17/2025 · 1h 35m
SM: We forgot that in a democracy, we have to one, grapple with where the public authentically is, and actually engage with it. And I think, you know, and part of this is fostered by social media, we sort of decided that we now have to say and fight for and push for every single perfect policy and cultural norm right now, regardless of whether the public is ready.
And I think it misunderstands the role that politicians and frankly social movements have in maintaining proximity to public opinion, of walking people to a place. We should be ahead of public opinion, but we have to be within arm's reach. If we get too far out ahead, we lose our grip on public opinion and we can no longer bring it with us.
And I think a lot of the conversations around sports and also some of the sort of cultural changes that we saw in expected workplace behavior, et cetera, was the byproduct of maybe just getting too far out ahead and not actually engaging in the art of social change making.
The position for more maximalist demands is one that you need to be in a hurry. Trans people are “dying now, suffering now, and that there isn't time for decades of political organizing here. And also that maybe it works, right?
EK: Or maybe there's a reason to believe it works. So you've been in more of those spaces than me. How would you describe how this sort of more maximalist approach in culture evolved and why?
SM: Well, first off, I think you're right. It is understandable. I mean, this is a scary moment.
I'm scared. As a trans person, I am scared. And I recognize that when the house is on fire, when there are attacks that are dangerous, very dangerous, that it can feel like we need to scream and we need to sound the alarm and we need everyone to be doing exactly that.
I get that instinct. I understand that people would say, if you give a little bit here, they'll take a mile. We're not negotiating with the other side, though.
In this moment, we have to negotiate with public opinion. We shouldn't treat the public like they're Republican politicians. When you recognize that distinction, I think it allows for a pragmatic approach that has the best in my mind, the best possible chance of “shifting public opinion as quickly as possible.
It would be one thing if screaming about how dangerous this is right now had the effect of stopping these attacks. But it won't.
EK: You call it a sort of abandonment of persuasion. It became true across a variety of issues for progressives, also for people on the right. And sometimes I wonder how much that reflected the movement of politics to these very unusually designed platforms of speech, where what you do really is not talk to people you disagree with.
SM: It's talk about people you disagree with, to people you agree with, and then see whether or not they agree with what you said. And there's a way in which I think that breeds very different habits in the people who do it.
I think that that's absolutely right. I mean, again, we're not in this place because of our community or our movement, but clearly we weren't in this place because we weren't shaming people enough, because we weren't canceling people enough, because we weren't yelling at people enough, because we weren't denouncing anti-trans positions enough. I think the dynamic with social media is that the most outrageous, the most extreme, the most condemnatory content is what gets amplified the most.
It's what gets liked and retweeted the most. And people mistake getting likes and retweets as a sign of effectiveness. And those are two fundamentally different things.
And I think that whether it's subconscious or even conscious, rewarding of unproductive conversations has completely undermined the capacity for us as individuals, or politically, for us to have conversations that persuade, that open people's hearts and minds, that meet them where they are.”
From The Ezra Klein Show: Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights, Jun 17, 2025
